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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'She&apos;s still avoiding me.',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/08.jpg" alt="Heading under the overpass" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="mother">
	<h2>A letter to my mother</h2>
	<p>
		My mother&apos;s still avoiding me.
		It drives me up the wall.
		As a separate issue, it also means I never get to talk to her.
		My current guess is that even if I see her in the mean time, it&apos;ll happen so infrequently that I won&apos;t get a chance to talk to her again about misgendering me.
		The first chance I get will likely be around July, when she&apos;ll try to talk me into going to see family and celebrating a local holiday of our country.
		And even then, she&apos;ll email me instead of asking in person.
	</p>
	<p>
		On the way home from the $a[EUGLUG] meeting last night, I was feeling rather hurt about it, so to vent, I drafted part of an email response to the letter I expect from her months from now.
		I mean, I obviously won&apos;t be going because she obviously doesn&apos;t want a real relationship with me, and I explained all that in my letter.
		I&apos;ve never been good enough to meet her standards, and I&apos;ve long since stopped trying.
		Even if I met them, I&apos;d have to not be me to do it.
		Getting that out of me really helped, but also kept me up past midnight.
		It was already late when I got home, plus I needed to get the words right.
		Unlike my last venting letter I directed towards her, I actually plan to send this one at some point.
		I&apos;m going to have one last shot to get her to see reason.
		If this letter doesn&apos;t get her to start coming around, any later attempt I make will be futile.
		This letter&apos;ll either get the conversation going finally, or it&apos;ll cause her to reject me further.
		I think I&apos;m about as prepared as I&apos;ll ever be for either option, though I obviously would prefer the former.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<h3>Artificial neurons, activation functions, and the importance of the sigmoid function</h3>
		<p>
			In a past week, we looked at artificial neural networks.
			Artificial neurons are just the nodes of such a network.
			These nodes each take a number of inputs and use them to compute an output, which in turn may be fed into one or more other artificial neurons as one of their inputs.
		</p>
		<p>
			The activation function is the function a given artificial neuron uses to translate its inputs into its output.
			Each neuron has its own activation function, which is why each neuron in the neural network is used instead of the network just repeating the outputs of a single neuron.
			The activation function can be as simple as an addition of the inputs, or it can be vastly more complex, to the point that a neural network can be included inside a single neuron&apos;s activation function.
			The sigmoid function is of particular importance because it maps all inputs to an output in the zero to one range.
			Zero gets mapped to <code>0.5</code>, huge numbers get mapped to numbers close to one, and hugely negative numbers get mapped to numbers close to zero (Gershenson, n.d.).
		</p>
		<h3>Relation to biological neurons</h3>
		<p>
			The concept of artificial neural networks was modelled after biological neural networks, as their name implies.
			While the structure of the network is defined before the network has had a chance to learn, the learning process changes what each artificial neuron does (Cowan, 2013).
			Like a brain, artificial neural network don&apos;t function based solely on their initial programming, though some initial programming is used.
			(This initial programming is similar to how we humans, because we&apos;re animals, have certain instincts, and our brains also automatically regulate certain functions such as heart functionality without our having &quot;learned&quot; to beat our hearts.)
			Much of how we operate though is based on past experiences, a feature that artificial neural networks replicate.
			Artificial neural networks also use past cases they&apos;ve seen to learn and solve similar problems later presented to them (Peterson & Rögnvaldsson, n.d.).
			Also like biological neurons, neurons in an artificial neural network are able to accept inputs from one or multiple other neurons.
			Artificial neural networks use fewer neurons than the natural counterparts they were modelled after, but it&apos;s only a matter of time before their complexity grows to exceed ours.
			We can keep adding to their complexity as we better understand how to build powerful computers, but our own mental complexity has to follow the slow process of evolution.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Cowan, M. K. (2013, August 14). <a href="https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/389237/mod_book/chapter/179471/neural-networks-ebook.pdf"><cite>Machine Learning</cite></a>. Retrieved from <code>https://my.uopeople.edu/pluginfile.php/389237/mod_book/chapter/179471/neural-networks-ebook.pdf</code>
			</p>
			<p>
				Gershenson, C. (n.d.). <a href="https://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0308/0308031.pdf"><cite>Artificial Neural Networks for Beginners</cite></a>. Retrieved from <code>https://arxiv.org/ftp/cs/papers/0308/0308031.pdf</code>
			</p>
			<p>
				Peterson, C., &amp; Rögnvaldsson, T. (n.d.). <a href="http://home.thep.lu.se/pub/Preprints/91/lu_tp_91_23.pdf"><cite>An Introduction to Artificial Neural Networks</cite></a>. Retrieved from <code>http://home.thep.lu.se/pub/Preprints/91/lu_tp_91_23.pdf</code>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="credit">
	<h2>Credit card</h2>
	<p>
		I don&apos;t think I mentioned this, but after that one credit card didn&apos;t work out, I accepted a different credit card offer that came in the mail.
		That one seemed better at first, though as I was leaving for work today, I received a letter in the mail from the bank.
		They want me to telephone them to confirm certain details before they approve the account.
		In other words, they don&apos;t like that I didn&apos;t include a telephone number in my application, and they want me to give them a call so they can grab the number off the caller $a[ID] to put on the account, even though I clearly don&apos;t want a number associated with the account.
		So I guess I&apos;ll head into the bank tomorrow, seeing as they have a local branch, and I&apos;ll do my best to get that cleared up.
		My guess is that they&apos;ll tell me to use the branch&apos;s telephone, because their system is likely too screwy to allow them to do it in-branch, and I&apos;ll then be telling the telephone support representative that I don&apos;t have telephone service when they ask.
		If they want to grab the number off caller $a[ID], then by all means, I won&apos;t care.
		They&apos;ll only be getting the number of one of their branches.
		Or if they want to decline the account on the grounds that I don&apos;t have telephone service, even though telephone service and a line of credit have absolutely zero to do with one another, so be it.
	</p>
	<p>
		I guess that&apos;s an exaggeration.
		These support people don&apos;t tend to grab the numbers off caller $a[ID].
		But still, they want me to telephone them so they have proof I have telephone service (which I don&apos;t), so I can&apos;t deny that I do any longer.
		And if I borrow a telephone and make it clear that I did, they&apos;ll require me to put that number on the account, even though doing so wouldn&apos;t be secure, as they&apos;d end up contacting an unrelated party about my account later on.
		The point is that they want to back me into a corner, where they can find some excuse why it&apos;s okay - and even necessary - to put some specific number on the account in lieu of leaving the account without a telephone number and just using email and post.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
